


The Ocean's Gift

by ImperatrixFortuna



Series: An Oceanic Romance [3]
Category: Nobilis - Jenna Moran
Genre: Briefly mentioned gender essentialism, F/F, Lots of talking about emotions, Magical Transition, Oral Sex, Trans Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-14 20:55:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29424891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ImperatrixFortuna/pseuds/ImperatrixFortuna
Summary: Foxglove has a request for her new lover. Surely for a goddess, a little thing like turning a cock into a cunt can't be that big a deal...
Series: An Oceanic Romance [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2155986
Comments: 1
Kudos: 2





	The Ocean's Gift

It was the next morning, while they were cuddling in bed, that Foxglove worked up the nerve to ask. 

"You know how you said I could use you for divine favours a little bit?" 

Annette looked up at her, smiling. "Yeah?" 

"I was wondering... could you do anything about..." Foxglove gestured down at herself - very specifically down, she hoped. "About this?" 

Annette frowned. "I mean, I could turn you into a mermaid? I'm not sure what you're asking." 

"...no, that's not - that would be cool but that's not what I meant. I mean..." she sighed, and tried to get a grip on herself; they'd had sex twice, she could use some more precise language. "I mean, could you do something about my penis so I don't have one any more?" 

"Oh." Annette held her closer, apparently more by reflex than intention. "You mean, can I give you a vag instead." Her voice was a little flat, a little too obviously working not to sound hurt. 

Foxglove squirmed a little. "Yeah." 

Annette was silent for a little while. "I mean. Probably." She was quiet for a moment longer. "Yeah. If you really want." Her tone was more listless by the moment. 

Foxglove rested her nose in Annette's hair for a moment, trying to sort through her suddenly very complicated emotions. "Don't do it if, like, it'll hurt. Or if I'd never get to see you again, or something. But... if it's easy, if you could just do it..." she wasn't sure how to finish that sentence. She didn't understand what the problem was, or feel like it was quite her place to ask. 

"Fine." The water around them was suddenly a blur of motion, tearing Annette away to dress her with dizzying speed and then sweeping them both out the window in one of Annette's travel currents. Foxglove was still naked, and she made an undignified noise and clung to Annette despite her grim expression. By the time she had got together enough coherence to ask where they were going, they'd arrived; Annette carried Foxglove up out of the water like it was effortless, onto a pristine beach on a tiny island, with no land in sight in any direction. 

Foxglove shivered, despite the sun; there was a breeze and Annette's miraculous dryness did not seem to apply to her right now. "Where, um, are we?" 

Annette shrugged, uncharacteristically brusque. "It doesn't have a name. It's just an easy place." She turned back to look, and Foxglove looked with her, seeing how the island's beach made an almost perfect curve, a little less than three quarters of a circle. 

Foxglove fought down terror. Annette had, in the end, used the goddess voice - the goddess mantle, they'd decided to call it, since it wasn't really about voice at all - the night before. It had been as exhilirating as the first time, made her feel as glorious as when she was beckoned out of a crowd to serve at the ocean's whim. This was more like what Annette seemed to think she was, when wearing the ocean, more like the girl she was abruptly aware she'd been trusting with her life for nearly a full day had been replaced by something older and larger that cared about her only from a distance, in a way that she could only hope was benign. The shock of the cool water brought her back to the present, being placed evenly but not gently into the shallow lagoon. She looked up at Annette, and Annette looked down; less than a minute ago it had been the other way around, curled safely in bed, and now Foxglove suddenly wondered how safe any of this had actually been. 

And she couldn't help but hate herself a little for the next words out of her mouth, which weren't any of her fears or doubts or desperate need to set some kind of a boundary on whatever the hell this was, but "Are you okay?" 

It made Annette stop, which was the worst part. Made confusion flicker in her eyes, made her seem a little more human, a little less like a tidal wave coiled into a pretty girl's frame. It made Annette stop, and Foxglove knew she would never actually get to know if she would have stopped for tears, or fear, or no, or please stop. That came to her in a crystal moment of understanding while she waited for Annette to answer. 

Finally she said, a little haltingly, "You said you wanted me to do something about it." 

"Not like this!" Foxglove's voice rose towards the hysterical. "I thought you would, like, feed me a secret herb or do it in my sleep or just snap your fingers and have it done! Not whatever this is!" 

Annette looked out towards the horizon, following Foxglove's desperate gesture before looking back. "It's a ritual. It's... it's meant to do what you wanted. It's one of the things the ocean can do, but it has to be done this way." Her expression was wavering from the dramatics of a moment ago towards her usual self-consciousness. "It's the only way that I can do it." 

"But why aren't you okay with it?" 

Annette's expression twisted, the way Foxglove had only seen it do when she talked about the goddess mantle. "It's just not... fun, for me. That's all. I can handle it." 

Foxglove took a deep breath. She was naked, she was cold, and she was a very long way from anywhere at all, apparently. There weren't even coconuts on this miserable excuse for an island. "I don't want you to handle it, I want to... I want to know what's wrong! I want to talk about this!" 

"But I can do this!" 

"You shouldn't have to! I... I can handle this, too, you know?! I've had a dick my whole life and it hasn't killed me yet! Can't we just... if you're going to insist on doing this, can't you let me help you deal with it?" 

Annette wavered for another moment, then sighed quietly and collapsed to a seat in the water next to her. "I just... wanted to get it over with. I don't like how it's going to force me to think." 

Tentatively, and mostly because she was cold, Foxglove leaned on her. pulling up her legs to hug and keep the breeze off.. Annette leaned in return, almost automatically, and put an arm around her as well. "I still don't understand what it is you were going to do." 

Annette sighed again. "It's... there's more than one way to see the ocean. That's obvious, right? Sailors and fish and people at the beach all see the ocean completely differently. Part of my job, part of what being the Queen of Salt Waters is, is that my idea of the ocean... kind of is how it is. It takes primacy, it stays steady and real and it helps hold the world together, apparently. But it doesn't stop, underneath it all, being the ocean the way it was before I got to it. So all those other ways of seeing it are still bundled in there with it. And I can be them, or use them, if I need to. As long as I believe in them enough." 

Foxglove leaned harder, and tried to process all that. "So what would you need to believe in to fix me?" 

Annette's voice went flat again for a moment. "That." Then she shook her head. "It's... the only way I can think of to do it, the only way the ocean can think of as well, is that there's this tradition of the ocean as... archetypically feminine. A mother goddess or whatever. I have to kind of buy into all that essentialism, to do what you asked me to do." 

"You mean, you have to believe my cock makes me less of a woman, so that you can magically make me more of one." 

Annette shuddered a little. "Yeah." 

There was a moment of silence between them. Then Foxglove surprised herself slightly by punching her on the arm. "I told you not to do it if it would hurt!" 

"It's not like it's really hurting!" 

"It still counts!" Foxglove wasn't sure if she was shaking from the cold or the catharsis. "How long would this even take?" 

"Maybe an hour?" 

"Annette! God, can't I be the chosen high priestess of a girl who can stand up for herself? Or is that my job now?" Annette was looking at her with slightly wide eyes and a bit of a blush, and Foxglove's ears took a moment to catch up with her mouth. "I mean. If I am, I mean, I don't want to assume." She was interrupted by Annette kissing her, which she was happy to be distracted by for a moment. 

Annette spoke first when they broke the kiss. "Everything you just said was so hot." 

Foxglove blushed. "I mean, uh, if the position is open, I wouldn't mind..." 

Annette kissed her again, quicker this time. "I think at this point the position has definitely been filled. God, that's so hot. I need an altar or something for you to serve me at." 

Foxglove had to suppress a violent shiver, which took her a bit out of the mood. "Not, uh, to be boring, or anything, because all that sounds great, but if we're not doing what we came here for then I would like to go somewhere warm where I have actual clothes." 

Annette blushed, this time from embarrassment rather than arousal, and made a tiny gesture with one hand. Instantly Foxglove was dry to the waist, and the water she was sitting in as warm as a bath. She let out an involuntary sigh of relief, and snuggled closer. Annette held her close and looked down at the water, or maybe at the sand beneath it. "I kind of still want to do it." 

Foxglove frowned. "I still don't want you to hurt yourself for me." 

"It really isn't like hurting. It's gross, not painful. I... it's important that it's gross, but. I want to do it for you? I want to do something for you that's hard for me because you're important enough to do hard things for." 

"We could... we could wait a day or something. You don't have to do it now." 

"If we're going to do this I really just want to get it over with. I'm afraid I'll lose my nerve if we leave and have to come back." 

Foxglove shifted a little. "I do want this. I want it a lot. I want it so fucking much, actually, that I kind of hate myself for not just saying 'yes'. I just also want you to be okay." 

Annette kissed her on the cheek, gently. "I'll... I'll be okay in the end. But. Could I ask you something? Before we do this?" 

"What?" 

"Could I suck you off? Like, one last hurrah? I want to... kind of celebrate this version of you. Before we go making changes." 

Foxglove stared at her for a moment, then burst out laughing. "Yeah, okay, I think I could endure that. Your most loyal servant awaits your blessing, o divine mistress. You dork." 

Annette let Foxglove go, kissing her earlobe as she started to drift around to face her. "You're very mouthy for a devoted servant." 

Foxglove leaned into the rhythm of the banter, glad to have something lighter to talk about. "I don't know what you mean, o Queen of Salt Waters and my crotch." She stretched out her legs and spread them apart; Annette leaned forward to almost-float in front of her, feet resting on the shallow sand and head just above the waves. Foxglove almost didn't register the impossibility of her position. Foxglove's cock was already semi-hard, the tip just shy of breaking the water. 

Annette flicked water at her. "I hope you're not angling for divine punishment, because I'm very bad at thinking of sexy ones." 

Foxglove was unabashedly grinning now. "Mostly I want you to take charge and make me shut up already." 

"Oh, is that what you want?" Annette ducked forward like lightning and wrapped her lips around Foxglove's shaft, dipping down under the water to swallow it with surprising speed. She nearly gagged, but mastered it, and pushed all the way down to the base with renewed confidence. Foxglove shuddered and her head tipped back a little, not quite voluntarily. She took a deep breath to try to think of a comeback but then Annette's tongue licked up the length of her, still inside the goddess's mouth, and she lost both breath and words with a squeaky little sigh of pleasure. Then the tongue-tip was travelling back down, but Annette was rising against it, and just when Foxglove was getting used to the combination of tongue and lips in motion Annette pressed her upper teeth in gently, ever so gently, just hard enough that Foxglove gasped again with delight and surprise. And that was the rhythm of it, tongue and lips driving up and down, teeth applied just enough to keep Foxglove from relaxing into it, and always in relentless motion so that she almost didn't notice when she started to twitch on her own timing. Annette did, though, and slowed down, not enough to keep her from coming but enough to make it gentle, enough that when she came in her goddess's mouth (and she felt that phrase like never before, _her_ goddess, the goddess who was hers) Annette was only gently bobbing up and down near her tip, swallowing her seed with twinkling eyes and then rising on her hands again with a playfully triumphant expression. 

"Salty," she said. "I can tell you're one of mine." 

Foxglove flicked water at her face, which Annette snapped somehow out of the air. "Fuck off," she said, which was not quite her most articulate reply ever. Annette just grinned more. 

"Sure I haven't changed your mind?" 

Foxglove flicked water at her again, and Annette let it splash this time. "That was amazing, but no. No you haven't." 

Annette sighed and nodded, rising up to her knees. "I didn't think so really. I just... it's going to be kind of weird, I think. For me." 

"I'm perfectly happy to wear a strap-on if the ocean needs her butt fucked again, you know." 

"That was _your_ idea, as I remember it. Making those hopeful eyes at me with your cock all hard after sucking me off." 

"You certainly didn't seem to mind." 

"I am a merciful and giving deity." 

"Sure you are." 

Annette sighed and stretched before standing. "Well, I am when you make nice with a blowjob. Okay. Let's get this done. Are you ready?" 

"Do I have to do anything?" 

"Not really. I'm just going to dunk you in the water until it... 'washes away your masculinity' or whatever the fuck. I'll figure it out, you just lie there and look pretty." 

"Oh, you think I look pretty?" Foxglove took a moment to strike what she imagined was an artistic pose. 

"I only choose pretty girls to my clergy, you know." 

"Well, it's a good thing I got in by the back door." 

Annette made a frustrated noise and a wave hit Foxglove, presumably not unrelatedly. She settled back kneeling into the water, this time beside Foxglove rather than opposite her. "Okay. You'll need to hold your breath for this, it doesn't work right if you can breathe the water anyway. You might go into a trance or something? I dunno. If there's a precedent more recent than Tiresias for something like this, nobody told me about it. You ready?" 

Foxglove nodded, and Annette gently but firmly pushed her head under the surface for the first dunking of many. 

Foxglove very nearly got a lungful of water the first time, after a day of breathing water like it was air. She had to sneeze when she came up, and Annette only gave her a moment longer than she needed for that before dunking her again. In, out, in, out; rapidly, it became more tedious than anything else. She was trying to count, but struggling to keep track. Then she felt something. 

At first it took her a moment to place it, but as she surfaced for air she caught a glimpse; Annette was stroking her cock again, trying to call it to attention one last time. Foxglove closed her eyes as she was dunked again, trying to focus on the sensation, but keeping herself breathing was hard enough and the touch kept drifting in and out of her awareness. It wasn't exactly erotic; she was too busy being dunked in and out of the water to get aroused. It was just intimate, just another sign that this was Annette, not the impersonal and uncaring ocean, that she was in safe hands. She was losing time more strongly, now, the repetitive motion and the distorted breathing and the light, almost teasing touches on her all working to unmoor her from herself. Her sense of the touch kept changing in indefinable ways as she drifted, and she kept glancing down in her brief moments above the water only to see no change, so eventually she stopped looking and just breathed, just drifted, just lost herself to the ocean and Annette... 

She wasn't sure, when she came to herself, when the touches had stopped. The thing that brought her back to awareness was being brought above the water for longer than a single breath, and she found herself sitting in the warm water, Annette's hand on her back, struggling to breathe normally instead of hyperventilating. Annette was murmuring something soothing but she couldn't quite make out the words. She was... she was okay. She was pretty sure she was okay. She was coming back to herself and Annette was actually singing, something about fishermen and a wooden shoe, and when Foxglove finally remembered enough of who and where she was to look up to Annette's eyes she managed a smile, though it wasn't exactly a happy one. 

"Hey," said the goddess, the Queen of Salt Waters, the anchor by which one corner of Foxglove's heart depended now. "Welcome back." She looked sad and tired, but she was still smiling, and not in a way that made Foxglove think she was just hiding the hurt. She glanced down, and Foxglove followed her look. From this angle, she couldn't see anything different, and for a frantic moment she thought maybe it hadn't worked, plunged her hand between her legs in desperation and - oh. _Oh_. That was different. 

"It worked," she gasped, voice cracking a little, and Annette nodded. "Thank you, thank you so much, I-" she couldn't finish the sentence, kissed her instead, not with hunger but from a desperate need to make clear how much she felt in that moment. Annette kissed back, her passion cooler but not completely smothered, and when Foxglove pulled back her smile was a little brighter, a little more genuine. 

"I'm glad you like it," Annette said. "I made it myself." Inexplicably, Foxglove blushed at that, pressed her legs together, felt suddenly bashful in a way she hadn't felt with Annette since she'd been called from the dance floor. This time it was Annette who kissed her, still not hotly, but firmly, determinedly, and Foxglove was kissing shyly back in a way she didn't understand. She found herself wondering if she had made a mistake, or Annette had, if somehow the process had changed her mind to make her more demure or 'ladylike' when it was only meant to change her body, and a flutter of panic rose up her throat. She broke the kiss, and saw concern in Annette's eyes, turned her head away before Annette could speak. "What's wrong?" she asked, and Foxglove shook a little, not from the force of it but her sudden feeling of her own delicacy. 

"I think-" god, even her voice seemed higher, softer now-"I think maybe it went wrong? I feel so... weak and helpless and shy, like maybe it changed my mind, not just my body, and I don't... I don't know what to do, I'm so scared." 

"Hey." Annette took her by the shoulders, stared at her until Foxglove looked back. "I just dunked you in the ocean over and over for an hour while you struggled to breathe. I bet this is the most vulnerable you've ever been in your life. That's normal, to feel that way, it's not the ocean getting in your head, it's just you being way overwhelmed." She hugged her, then pulled back to meet her eyes again. "If I've changed you in a way I didn't mean to, I swear, I will do all that is in my power to fix it, but I'm pretty sure this is just... you, vulnerable. And that's okay." 

Foxglove took a breath and nodded, because that... that made sense, she'd been overthinking it. (She had half a degree in overthinking things, it was bound to happen now and then.) Then she threw herself forward to hug Annette, who rocked back a little with the force of it, but held her close anyway. 

"I think maybe we should get you somewhere dry for a change." Foxglove tensed, panic rising again, but Annette was still speaking. "Let's take you home, get you dressed, and go for a walk on real dry land. I'm not going anywhere, but I think maybe you need Annette more than you need the ocean right now." Again, that made sense, again, Foxglove let herself be soothed, held on tight. "If you can talk right now, I want you to say okay. I think I've done enough whooshing you places without your permission for one day." 

Foxglove nodded, but that wasn't enough; she could speak, she was sure, if she just focused on it. "Okay," she said, and then "Thank you." 

Annette held her close. "I am a giving and merciful deity. And anyway, I want you feeling good and properly yourself when we give that thing a test-drive tonight." 

Foxglove nodded again, still holding close as the water rose up around them and carried them away, as she remembered that this was water she could breathe and let her air escape for now. She still felt shy and uncertain, but now that it was mentioned, she was looking forward to a night of experimenting with the new equipment as well. And as the ocean carried her away into its depths, she managed, once again, to smile.

**Author's Note:**

> For the time being, this is probably the end of this series, although one never knows when inspiration will strike again. Many thanks for reading, if you've read this far; please do go back and read if you're just skipping ahead.


End file.
